


The Dragon in the Library

by maracolleenbanks



Category: Dreamwalkers Universe
Genre: Dragons, M/M, Pandemonium (Dreamwalkers), Sade Hall (Dreamwalkers), Succubi (Dreamwalkers), Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 09:19:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15458157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maracolleenbanks/pseuds/maracolleenbanks
Summary: The title for this story was inspired by S.J. Tucker's songRavens in the Library(video).





	The Dragon in the Library

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Dreamwalkers Universe](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/404355) by Siren Tycho and Mara Colleen Banks. 



Lilim have a hard time with gravity in Sade Hall. Like that annoying “tk-th-tz” consonant in Infernal that has to be learned as a child if you’re ever going to have hope of pronouncing it at all, relativistic gravity is something most people simply have to grow up with. Some Lilim are fortunate enough to be born close to the border with Sade Hall or in communities of those who who are raised to be consummate dream walkers from an early age. Of these who sneak across into Sade Hall for parties as teenagers, most eventually get a handle on the idea that all directions are equal. However, given the hard reality of life in a realm four and a half lightyears across, the best most of those Lilim who first make it to Sade Hall as adults can muster is a stubborn insistence that "my way is the True Down" that will not be relinquished no matter how sexy the potential new playmate walking on “the ceiling” is.

Raldr was not from the borderlands. He was from a family of succubi in the Garden in the shadow of the mountains, thousands of miles from both the border with Sade Hall and the sea. There were rumors that a reclusive academic at the university in a neighboring town could step from the shadows of his study into a conference room at a university in Sade Hall, but no one in Raldr’s village was very good at dream walking, and no one had ever been to Sade Hall or knew anyone who had—not even his wandering (by local standards) Uncle Reed. So little knowledge of the place had reached his village, in fact, that when he finally got to Sade Hall himself he was completely unprepared to step through the door onto a street lined with houses facing sixteen different directions.

By all rights, this should have unhinged him—especially since he managed to avoid the small army of Sade who dutifully cruise the border places between the Garden and Sade Hall looking for frightened Lilim. Many claim the most remarkable thing that happened to him on that most remarkable trip was managing to walk all the way from the border with the Garden to the Library in Sade Hall without being “helped,” but the truth was that his focus made that feat inevitable. He was determined to reach the library, and this determination became desperation as soon as he stepped over the border. It was inconceivable, after all, that a library would submit to the same chaos as the street. Lamp posts and even houses can be bolted down, but librarians, surely, would not stand for books flying everywhere, which was the only state of things he could imagine in a place where everyone gets to decide what Down is. 

After only a few minutes of shock, he steeled himself. With a determined hope for order, he stepped forward, took a few steps and stumbled, took a few steps more and fell. From then on, he kept his eyes resolutely on the obsidian strip he decided was his walkway until he reached the library steps, reassuring himself in muttered obscenities that even Lilith herself, patron goddess of the Garden known for her love of all things wild, wouldn't stand for this.

It wasn't until Raldr blundered into the library, pushed his way through the crowds of young scholars waiting for a tour, and reached the tunneled stacks that he stopped and looked up. Then his last hope for ordered laws of physics was stripped from him as he saw the tunnel of shelves, winding around without ceiling or floor, packed with books.

He dropped to his knees and wept.

"Sade's balls,” a voice behind him said.

Raldr looked over his shoulder for the source of the profanity and saw a succubus with grey skin tinged purple, curled horns, and a whip-like tail that lashed in agitation. Her fangs were shorter than his, but this didn’t reassure him at all. He’d heard of the succubi of Sade Hall and the great magicians who bound them in thrall. His mother insisted before he left that he buy some nectar odor enhancing spray as soon as he crossed the border just in case it wasn’t obvious to the native succubi that he wasn’t prey, but he had, of course, seen no such thing.

"You've got it bad,” the succubus said. “Are you from the Garden?"

Raldr nodded and tried to discreetly wipe his tears away with his sleeve.

"How did you come all this way without learning to walk?"

"I walked," Raldr said defensively.

"Lurched, more like," she said. "I've been following you since I saw you outside Master's house. You almost walked into the hibiscus, and I said, ‘That one's not right, that Lilim.’ I've never seen a Lilim disrespect a sacred plant. It was a gift from a Lilith herself, y'know."

Most people would have apologized for endangering something so precious, but the casual mention of a demon-summoning magician getting a gift from someone who identified that closely with Raldr’s own patron goddess made Raldr’s vertigo even worse.

"You've got it bad," she said again and knelt in front of him and felt his forehead with her tail. “You're not sick, at least. We’ve just got to get you walking Sade-wise. Can I help you?"

He nodded, and she held out a hand. He took it and allowed himself to be pulled up.

"It's really easy,” she said. 

“If you say so,” he said and started to tip.

She moved behind him and steadied him with her hands on his shoulders.

“It’s lucky you managed to get here,” she said. “The library is the easiest place for Lilim to learn, or so I've heard. See how there's a strip of wood that goes in a spiral? Just follow that.”

"I can't walk on walls," Raldr said.

"You can, though," she contradicted. "All you have to do is decide that you can.”

Raldr whined.

"Or, you can jump over the books on this side, I guess,” she said. “Like rock hopping in a stream. You won't be able to reach most of the books that way, though.”

"I think I have no choice," he said.

"I'd stay and help you, but Master is calling me. We’re going on a ski trip, and he wants me to help him pack."

Before he could say another word, a purple pentagram formed between them, and she was summoned off with reassurances that someone would be sure to come along to help the cute Lilim boy, waving her tail goodbye.

Raldr closed his eyes until the vertigo passed. Then, for the first time, he really looked around. The Library in Sade Hall was different than he expected. The way his family talked about it, he expected dripping castle walls and pale monsters hidden in black cloaks. Instead, the place was bathed in the cold, clean light of crystal lamps that illuminated walls lined with statues of literary and intellectual giants in artistically sensual poses. There were monsters enough, but most of them weren’t wearing very much at all, and many of them seemed as nice and approachable as one he had just met, far from the brooding monsters of shadow his Uncle Reed warned him about. 

So, where would he find what he was looking for? Where were the candlelit stacks patrolled by yellow eyes that watched him from the shadows? He’d been dreaming of them ever since he cut his first fang. His dreams called to him, filled him with longing to leave the garden and roam the stacks with the thrill of dread that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. 

A place like that had to be in Sade Hall, and where else in Sade Hall would it be but the library? It was obvious the library was huge. It was possible that the atmosphere he was looking for existed in some remote corner. If so, he would definitely need help finding it.

He stumbled to the entrance and joined the group for a tour. This group, like every group of people in Sade Hall Raldr had seen on his journey, couldn’t agree on which way was up, and it was easy to tell who was comfortable with this arrangement. The native Sade seemed to prefer any Down but the direction Raldr thought was Down. They chatted comfortably on what looked to him like the wall and ceiling while a few Lilim huddled together in silence with green faces.

The tour began when the tour guide, a figure in a hooded cloak the color of smoke, floated up to the group. The guide’s hood was up, but Raldr could see under it just enough to see the empty eye sockets of a skull staring back at him. 

This was promising, he thought. 

The tour guide raised a skeletal hand and spun slowly so everyone could see from their angle. The chatter of the Sade died down to a murmur. When all was quiet, the guide stopped spinning and pointed with an open hand down a tunnel corridor labeled “Tall Tales of the Mountain People.” When it seemed that all interested parties had seen him, he floated off in that direction, spiraling effortlessly along the walkway as he went.

As soon as the group started to move, the Sade began to chatter again. This annoyed Raldr, who was far from the front of the pack and worried that he was missing what was being said by the guide. After walking for several minutes, they stopped in front of a statue of a woman in mountain garb climbing an ice wall, and Raldr pushed his way to the front and listened, but the guide gestured to the statue and said nothing. Raldr admired the statue while he waited for the guide to speak. It looked like the statue had been carved from blue ice. Standing in front of it made him feel like he’d been hit with a blast of cold, which was refreshing in the hot library, with its temperature tuned for those without clothes. 

After a few moments of quiet contemplation from the tour guide, the group moved on without a word from the guide. 

No wonder the Sade were talking, he thought.

From there, they passed a bright airy room labeled “The Counting Room.” In it were people consulting thick leather tomes, writing things down in ledgers with luxurious white feather pens. As Raldr stared, the people seemed to glow.

“Mostly scholars from Isla Virgo in there it seems to me,” a Lilim human standing next to him said. He seemed to be only slightly more comfortable in Sade Hall than Raldr. “Boring.”

Raldr agreed, but he wouldn’t have said so, though he admired the guy’s frankness. Straight-talk was a value among the Lilim he grew up with. With the consent protection going, communicating your desires and intentions clearly and directly was usually the difference between a satisfying sexy meal and getting tangled in vines. While those they called “foodies”—like the bored Lilim beside him—had no such requirement with their diet of fruit, most tended to see the value of “just say it and get on with it.” 

Raldr, of all his kin, had to learn to be particularly careful around the consent protection. Most people knew what a succubus wanted when they showed an interest, but Raldr had been incubated by a human with a vampire fetish and had been born with a taste for blood, a taste no other succubus he’d ever encountered shared.

The tour moved on, and Raldr was pleased to find he and the other Lilim, who introduced himself as Stayan, fell into uneasy step together.

“Have you been here long?” Raldr asked.

“Not long, but it feels like long, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Raldr said. “I walked straight here, and I feel like it took me fifty years.”

“Right? What are you here for?”

Raldr hesitated, not wanting to admit that he was there following a vision. “I’m not sure. Vague augury, I guess.”

“I’m here for the dragon,” Stayan said.

“What dragon?” Raldr asked.

“You’ve never heard of the dragon in the library?”

“Never.” 

“What rock did you crawl out from?” Stayan asked, and Raldr bristled. “Never mind. They say there is a dragon here. If you can convince the dragon to teach you, then you’ll come away with magic you can’t learn any other way.”

“Like what?” Raldr asked.

“Like flying, for one. Like our guide here.”

Raldr realized then that he had been distracted from the tour by the conversation. He looked for the guide and found him pointing to a sign over a door that said “Tamlin Root and Other Ecstasies.” Beyond the door was a greenhouse with its glass walls nearly covered in vines. He wasn’t missing much, he decided. His Uncle Reed grew better Tam’ than anyone.

“I assumed our guide was using magic carpet shoes,” Raldr said. “That’s the only way I know of to fly without wings.”

“They call them Light Shoes here, but no. Their way of flying is a secret. I think. Maybe, not even Sade knows.”

The thought of learning secret magic from a dragon was tempting, and Raldr almost asked if he could come with his new friend on his dragon hunt but the eyes in his dreams called him, and he said nothing.

The tunnel dipped in what Raldr and Stayan judged to be a generally downward direction and, for once, Sade Hall seemed to agree with them as the hall got darker and cooler as they walked. The subjects they passed got darker, too, and seemed increasingly to interest the Sade. A few left the group when they passed the Hall of Night Creatures, which was so long Raldr couldn’t see the end of it. Then a few more peeled off to investigate Florentine Flogging.

“I think I picked the right tour if I’m going to find the way to the dragon,” Stayan said as he pulled an apple out of his pocket and bit into it with a loud crunch.

It had been a very long walk from the garden, and Raldr had only stopped long enough to fang a chef he’d seen smoking on his break outside a tavern in Maloy. Foodies eat well, so the chef was delicious and so into being sucked—or the hand job Raldr gave him while he did it—he had to abandon his shift after Raldr was done with his meal. Raldr could go for a long time on a meal like that, but that encounter was a very long time ago. 

It’d taken him weeks after that to follow rumors to the cave with the staircase that connected the Garden and Sade Hall. Even as he followed the spiral down in the dark through the roots of the mountains, it was several weeks more before he could be sure that they lead where he intended to the bottom of the sea and the door to Sade Hall. The whole time he was in that cave he saw no one until he found the wood and iron door that said “Sade,” and it was a full day’s walk from the cave to the library. 

Raldr almost envied Stayan his apple. 

“Are there different tours?” Raldr asked, trying not to think about his aching hunger.

“Every tour is different,” Stayan said. “This place is so big, they pretty much pick a direction at random. Some people take a tour every time they come. This is my fifth tour. I think the guides have been on a botany kick. I’ve seen that greenhouse every time. Always makes me hungry just looking at it. Apple?”

Raldr blushed. “Succubi usually can’t eat human food.” 

“Lucky you,” Stayan said. “If you go wandering off, you can stay in the library indefinitely. There’s a never-ending supply of ingenuous young Sade scholars, especially down here. Seriously, who learns about flogging by reading about it?”

The tunnel turned up again, and they both instinctually stopped.

“I don’t think a dragon is going to hang out any higher than here,” Stayan said and looked around. “Ah-hah, ‘Runes.’ That’s the first magic I’ve seen on this tour.”

He left the group and went a short way down the hall and picked up a book called “Healing Songs” and flipped through. 

“This is in Draconic,” he said. “This must be the way.”

The group started to move away from them and Raldr hesitated. This didn’t look like the library he saw in his dream, but it could turn into it if the tunnel descended again. He peered down the tunnel of runes but couldn’t see the end of it or if it forked.

“What does your vague augury say?” Stayan asked. “Want to come? If you get hungry enough, maybe I can…you know…help you out.”

In his dreams, Ralder had always wandered the stacks alone, but there was no telling how deep in the library he would have to go. Maybe it would be better to have a friend. At least, for awhile. 

Raldr jogged to catch up with Stayan who was already walking down the hall of runes.

This area of the library had the dusty vanilla electrical smell of dark magic and old books. It burned Raldr’s nose and made him sneeze.

“May the lust of your loves and the fruit of the trees preserve your health and keep you ever delicious,” Stayan said. 

The words of the old Lilim Sneeze Blessing—blessings were always verbose by Lilim standards—made Raldr homesick.

“So, do you speak Draconic?” Raldr asked.

“I didn’t study Draconic in university or anything,” Stayan said “Since then, it’s been kind of hard to avoid.”

“I suppose, if you’re into hunting dragons,” said Raldr.

”Speaking of hunting,” Stayan said. “I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like to hunt as a succubus. My people were all foodies.

Raldr bristled. “Hunting” was a common enough term for what he did to get nourishment, but he preferred the word “fanging.” It sounded almost like “fucking,” which was closer to how he thought of what he did to get food than any of the predator-prey metaphors his relatives and neighbors used. It was easy for them to go on about the hunt and forget about “consent” and “ensuring win-win” when they weren’t made to drain people’s blood. For him, it wasn’t so easy. 

He had gone through a phase when he thought he could find a way to make his tastes win-win. He allowed a girl he liked to drink him once, but it felt wrong and made him feel no pleasure, just weak and sick. It took one look from the healer to determine that, while he had received all of the drinking and hunting ability of the vampire he had been made without the attributes that made being drained feel pleasurable. After that, he allowed no one, no matter how much he liked them, to drink him. Everyone in his village said they understood, but they always looked at him funny after that. He invested a great deal of time and energy in the sexual side, learning how to make satisfying his hunger as pleasurable for his partners as possible, but facing the hard fact of his nature, that he needed blood without being able to give any in return, was never easy for him.

Still, it was obvious Stayan’s curiosity was just curiosity.

“I’m not really into hunting,” Raldr said. “At least, I don’t do the stalking element of surprise thing.”

To Raldr’s surprise, Stayan looked disappointed.

“I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be hunted,” Stayan said. “It’s the pain I’m afraid of. Vampires are cool.”

“How did you know I’m a vampire?” Raldr gasped.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Stayan asked. “Deathly pale skin, predatory eyes, dark and brooding affect, suspiciously smart fashion sense for anyone outside Isla Virgo.”

Raldr had to concede that Stayan had a point. 

“Biting doesn’t have to hurt, you know,” Raldr said.

“No?”

“Not at all. If I spend awhile kissing your neck, you’ll—or my partner will feel kind of high. After awhile, my saliva makes their neck pretty numb. If I suck really gently, they aren’t even be able to tell when I stopped kissing and started fanging.”

“That doesn’t sound bad,” Stayan said. “Pretty awesome, really. Hey look! It forks!”

They had reached a place where the tunnel split in two. They had to choose: “Draconic Poetry” or “Deep Word Magic.” 

Raldr liked the sound of “Deep Word Magic,” but he knew Stayan would go for the Draconic section. Sure enough, Stayan brightened and walked toward it without thinking, but when Raldr didn’t keep up, he stopped and turned back and frowned at Raldr’s sad look.

“My vague augury says word magic is the way for me,” Raldr said. “You can walk with me for awhile if you want.”

“I would, really, Raldr,” Stayan said, “but I’ve been here five times already, and I’ve only got so many apples.” 

Raldr held out his hand to say goodbye, and Stayan grabbed his wrist in the traditional way of the Lilim. Raider took his wrist in return and held it while they repeated together the Blessing Upon Parting for Those Who Travel.

May there be fruit worthy of your hunger  
and beauty worthy of your lust  
as you wander icy cliff faces or warm seas.  
May there always be fixed stars to guide you  
and wandering stars to inspire you  
and the life that is our light attend your way.

The pulse of Stayan’s blood pounded against Raldr’s palms they said the blessing. He could have handled a quick goodbye, but Stayan’s steady pulse and the time it took to say the blessing was too much. A growl of hunger escaped Raldr’s lips as they finished speaking the blessing together.

“I’m sorry, Stayan,” Raldr said.

“You must be really hungry.”

Ralder nodded but wouldn’t meet Stayan’s eyes. He didn’t want him to think he walked with him because he saw him as a potential meal.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Stayan said. “You can fang me if you can catch me.”

“Sure!” Raldr said with surprise.

“But you have to do that numbing thing.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m going this way,” he called back as he ran toward the Draconic Poetry section.

Without pausing to grieve “Deep Word Magic,” Raldr took off after him.

 

Raldr sniffed the air. The smell of magic had followed him here, too, to the stacks of poetry. If anything, it had gotten stronger. As he walked, it got stronger still until he could barely smell the fresh sweat of his friend despite his hunger. The books, as he walked, got progressively older, too, until the space itself seemed to believe he was walking back in time. The crystal lights gave way to giant guttering candles that were placed further and further apart the deeper he walked into the library.

He was all need and so he did not notice how he instinctually put out his hands, feeling for body heat every time he reached a place where the tunnels forked. He didn’t even notice enough to be grateful that the tunnels branched like a tree, making it easy to find his way back, even though he had never been so far from home. 

His friend was tiring. Though he would not own them consciously, Ralder had the instincts and endurance of a hunter. He paced himself, trusting his senses to guide him if he lagged far behind. Stayan had no such instincts and sprinted as fast as he could and, when he tired of that, ran fast for the joy of running rather than any great strategy. 

Stayan wanted to be caught. He had always wanted to be caught. 

It was true. He had been chased many times by those chasing rumors and power, and they had traded with him—those who had something suitably precious to offer—but he had never encountered someone like this, someone who, he would later learn, caught the smoke of his desire for a hunter in the web of dream and followed it with the longing for that musty bookish darkness and his looming presence. He had seen this desire in Raldr’s eyes when he first asked what brought him to the library, and he knew it was a true longing that would drive a country Lilim away from the fresh Tamlin root and across the Garden and halfway across Sade Hall.

He was tiring and knew he would soon get clumsy, so he slowed and listened. Raldr was coming up fast. If he ducked into a fork in the hall, there would be just enough time to change.

Eventually, it got so dark, Raldr was forced to slow and feel for obstacles with his feet. If he could have seen himself, he would have been amused to find that in the darkness he really didn’t know which way was up or down, and he walked in a spiral while he thought he walked in a straight line. 

He lost the heat trail and scent of his friend, but still he walked forward, too invested now in the hunt to stop. Then he heard the gruff pant of exhausted breathing and sniffed. The smell was wrong: lust, anticipation. Lovers, maybe, in the dark. Then he saw in front of him the yellow eyes from his dream, glowing in the candlelight. His nostrils filled with smoke and the scent of desire. 

“Drink, Raldr.”

Hunger and instinct took over. Before he could think, Raldr sprang at the glowing eyes. Like a predator, he went for the neck instinctually, pulling them both to the floor. Only when his mouth was full of blood did his consciousness reel back and consider what he was doing: The voice was Stayan’s, but the blood he drank definitely wasn’t human. The skin against his lips was smooth and cold. 

He pulled back and looked into the eyes of his friend and saw the cat-like pupils of a dragon.

**Author's Note:**

> The title for this story was inspired by S.J. Tucker's song [Ravens in the Library](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mglgIu_n6Bw) (video).


End file.
